"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden

Over on The Bee Board, a guy I don't really know very well was discussing a recent funeral that he attended for a friend. He found comfort in these words, which were apparently sampled in an ODB song. (ODB stands for Ole Dirty Bastard, who was a rapper, who apparently died.)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Those words sounded familiar to me and I looked them up. They're from a W.H.Auden poem, that you might remember from the funeral scene in Four Weddings and A Funeral. I remember seeing that movie and being so moved by the poem that, I actually wept, in the theater. Such an appropriate actualization of grief, as I know it.

Here is the poem, in it's entirety, reprinted for you...

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden

The last paragraph, in particular, really moves me. The mundane removal of the grand, celestial things, absolutely conquered by the author's grief.

Later, when some of you become aware of recent developments, you'll ask me if I went searching for that poem because I was scared that i was dying. I will tell you then, as I tell you now, it's just a crummy coincidence that this is happening and that I'm reading poems about death.

Cheers,
Mr.B